Gamification in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector: A Narrative Literature Review and Research Directions

This paper represents a narrative literature review on gamification within tourism and hospitality sector (T&H). Out of 61 studies, 55 papers examined the importance of adopting gamification in this industry but failed to acknowledge the role of motivational affordances that are responsible for invoking gameful experiences in tourism apps and promoting sustainable travel practices which benefits all gamification parties specifically app designers, core service providers, third party service providers, and tourists or players. Motivational affordances are crucial for the fulfilment of basic psychological needs for relatedness, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, that in turn induces further behavioural outcomes reflected in achieving meaningful users’ interaction, engagement, and loyalty in addition to potentially achieving rewards. Hence, the researchers have searched in a number of databases including Elsevier, ResearchGate, Routledge, Springer, and Scopus to reveal whether gamification literature within T&H sector provided enough examinations for motivational affordances and their ultimate effects on psychological and behavioural outcomes. Finally, the researchers elaborated on specific future research directions.